


twenty odd years and another catastrophe

by philthestone



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, and therefore was compelled to write cathartic angst, i hate this show a lot, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:46:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2197524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aunt Mary doesn't stop shaking the entire drive home. It is the first time Sybbie has seen her cry in public.</p>
            </blockquote>





	twenty odd years and another catastrophe

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to write some type of cathartic angst to wash myself of the horror that was the s3 christmas special, so YAY, THIS! Two things: I'm really fascinated by the potential that is baby Sybbie and George's relationship, and I wanted to explore the idea that they'd both be in their twenties when ww2 breaks out and bottom line is Mary's life sucks phenomenally I'm so sorry Mary.  
> But it has a happy ending. Sort of.  
> Reviews are Sybbie and George actually having both sets of parents.  
> *cries*  
> (Edit: I screwed up and calculated George's age wrong. that has just been fixed.)

She finds her aunt sitting on the edge of the piano seat in the drawing room, staring directly at the wall opposite and singing softly under her breath. 

The only time she has ever heard her sing was when she and Badger were still children, and he had fallen from his perch on the edge of a tree branch in the backyard of his grandmother’s house and broken his arm. His mother had gathered him up into her arms in a way that she was rarely wont to do and sung a melody in his ear, and Sybbie remembers thinking, as Daddy ‘phoned for Doctor Clarkson, what a lovely voice her aunt could have if only she practiced. The arm had taken quite a while to heal properly, and Sybbie spent so much time hovering at the Doctor’s shoulder to make sure her cousin was alright that by the end of the week she had firmly decided that she wanted to grow up to be a nurse.

(Daddy had smiled in that funny sad way of his when she told him – in her determined ten-year-old voice – about her grand plans for the future, and she remembers worrying for a moment that she had broken The Rules. When she asked Badger about it, though, he said that The Rules oughtn’t get in the way of their dreams, ever, and so she stopped worrying and made up for it by giving Daddy an extra big kiss on the cheek that night before they were sent up to bed.)

Now, she can’t help but remember the incident with an unnerving amount of clarity and wonders if this time, it isn’t her cousin who has actually broken The Rules, instead of her.

She grips the thin piece of paper in her fingers and hovers in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed. It has been this way since they were children, each with an unfortunate inability to know how to deal with – well, _everything_ – without the other at their side. Sybbie supposes it has something to do with the fact that they were the only two to really know what the other felt all the time. She supposes that perhaps it wasn’t the best way to deal with things, that unwavering attachment, but then she also thinks that people who’ve both their parents intact have the luxury of not having to depend on cousins in order to live a seemingly normal life. 

They never had that particular luxury.

(Ironic, how most other luxuries were there at the tip of their fingers – but not that. Never that.)

It is a funny thing, she thinks, as she leans from one foot to the other in the doorway, her skirt swaying silently around her calves, that they never really voiced it like that – that they hadn’t proper parents. If she is being honest with herself, she had, for all intents and purposes, had a mother; and Badger a father, as well.

(Neither of their parents had ever remarried. She’d asked her father a few times, when she was younger, and he always told her “maybe someday”. But with her aunt, the idea hadn’t even crossed her mind.)

When the news came, Daddy was visiting her in the village hospital and she was organizing the rolls of gauze on the shelf. Her face had gone deathly pale and she’d dropped the box of gauze and Daddy had known the moment she looked him in the eye.

_“We regret to inform you that Lieutenant George Matthew Crawley, aged twenty-three, has been declared missing in action as of October 4th, 1943.”_

Her first question was “does Aunt Mary know?” and her second was “he’s not dead” (a statement, more than a question) and her father and gripped her in a hug so tight that she went numb for a full five minutes.

She remembers having slipped away from the governess and sitting with Badger in a corner of the kitchen downstairs, taking turns reading from their battered copy of Wind in the Willows and giggling as Barrow snuck them milk and cookies from Mrs. Patmore’s pantry. It was – is – a game they played, trying to ignore the fact that Daddy’s smiles rarely reached his eyes and Aunt Mary sometimes got sad over the strangest of things and how Badger’s Granny Isobel (who could be considered, for all intents and purposes, her own Granny as well) would sometimes reach out and stroke his hair compulsively and look as though she was trying not to cry and that sometimes her cousin would sneak into his mother’s room talk to the portrait sitting on the bedside table (Sybbie was the only one who knew) and the fact that Sybbie always felt responsible in a way that she knew other children her age couldn’t possibly feel.

(It was that day that they decided to make The Rules, over their small worn copy of Wind in the Willows.)

She is about to ask Aunt Mary what she’s singing, her fingers nearly tearing the paper gripped so tightly, desperately, in her hand, when she feels a small sob escape her own lips and realizes how much that goddamn scrap of paper means to her and how she can’t possibly imagine a world without her stupid cousin and _how do Aunt Mary and Daddy do it every day I’ve no idea._

Her aunt’s eyes focus on her, but she doesn’t stop singing, the words floating across the drawing room towards Sybbie – almost as though by singing them the older woman hopes that her son will be brought back home to her, in some miraculous, long-forgotten way.

_“If I was the only girl in the world, and you were the only boy ...”_

(Aunt Mary’s voice wavers, but they both pretend that everything is normal for a moment longer.)

Sometimes, she and Badger would go out to London and spend the night in dance clubs and pretend that they actually had proper dates instead of being two cousins from a family whose nose was stuck in the past and missing a parent each. Badger would scout out suitable-looking boys for her and she would suggest perhaps rather less suitable-looking ladies for him and at the end of the night, both would emerge date-less and laughing and happier than usual. They weren’t a bad-looking pair, either, Sybbie had said once jokingly; him all blond hair and blue eyes and cheeky smiles and her dark and rosy and eyes glittering with mischief.

(They _did_ take after – their _parents_ \- even if they denied it to the grave. If nothing else, it proved entertaining, in a painful, frustrating sort of way; once, in London, a tall, severe-looking man emerging from the newspaper building had looked at Badger as though seeing a ghost.)

Sybbie remembers that day at the station, how she’d watched as her aunt had stopped and turned back, stumbling to where they had left Badger in all his uniformed glory standing by the train – how she’d caught her son’s hand as he was about to board and pressed the raggedy stuffed dog to his fingers with the words _“not a scratch, George Crawley, do you hear me?”_ , uttered shaky and catching with pale skin and wide eyes.

Aunt Mary did not stop shaking the entire drive home. It was the only time Sybbie had ever seen her cry in public. 

(Rule One: never, under any circumstances, do something to make their parents sad. They had enough to deal with, as it was.)

(Signed, Badger and Ratty.)

It was all a little strange; but then, as Sybbie thought later in the solace of the village hospital, that Aunt Mary did a lot of strange things. Daddy did, too, and so did everybody else, so in the end, it didn’t quite matter how many stuffed dogs were pressed into Badger’s hands – only that he came home safe and alive and _God, if I’ve ever done a good thing in my entire life, please please protect him._

 _“Dear Ratty,”_ reads the letter. 

_“I’m alive and relatively unscathed. The only reason I’m writing you and not Mama is because they’re far more likely to get this bloody letter to the hospital than they are to Downton. I know, I know – I’ve broken The Rules. I’m sorry old mum, I truly am – I know how you must hate me right now, but give a poor chap a chance, here. It’s not exactly pleasant being shot in the arm.  
Please tell Mama not to worry. I’m being sent home as soon as possible._

_Cheers,_

_Your Badger.”_

She looks Aunt Mary in the eye and she knows – they both know – and her aunt lets out a sob that sounds half like a laugh and half like a gasp and an “oh, _God_ , he’s alive!” and the next thing Sybbie knows she’s sitting on the piano seat next to her and holding tightly to the filmy material of the back of her aunt’s dress and crying harder than she remembers doing in ages.

“Thank you,” whispers the woman in her arms, “for protecting him.”

Sybbie has a feeling that it isn’t God Aunt Mary’s talking to, but she doesn’t say anything and instead whispers, in a small, half-broken voice:

“He broke The Rules.”

Aunt Mary looks up at her and presses her hand to Sybbie’s cheek, the lines around her eyes glistening with tears.

“Everyone breaks The Rules at one point, Sybbie.” 

(What’s that saying again? That promises are made to be broken? War does not give way to decent promise-keeping situations, she knows.) 

Aunt Mary’s lip trembles. “It’s not always their fault.”

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I read the whole "badger and ratty" thing in some other story a long time ago and I thought it was really cute and don't ask me if wind in the willows was actually a thing back then because I do not know.  
> yes.


End file.
